


The Icemark 100

by BoomerangFish



Category: The Icemark Chronicles - Stuart Hill
Genre: F/M, Gen, applicable warnings will be at the beginning of each chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-12
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-05-19 21:05:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5980891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoomerangFish/pseuds/BoomerangFish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>100 prompt fills, drabbles and assorted one-shots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Everyday Magic

His powers grow every day. In the past week alone he turned the ceiling of their room into the night sky over the Ice Wastes, sprinkling it with tiny stars and setting the Veils of the Blessed Moon to cascade and glow. He mends holes in his clothing and hers by passing a hand over the tears. He called life back into dead wood, branches and roots twining forth from a dry bit of kindling, and now a new tree grows in the Citadel's garden.

She realizes that he does these things to impress her, but greater than any feat of magic he could perform is his simple presence. Oskan, who gave her bread for Yule and can always make her laugh, even when the stresses of rule rattle in her head like trapped birds. Oskan, who stood by her during the darkest time, who gave up his life for her, who came back. Who knows her better than she knows herself.

With him, every day is magical.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The List: 
> 
> 1\. Introduction  
> 2\. Love   
> 3\. Calling  
> 4\. Irregular Orbit  
> 5\. Response  
> 6\. Permanent  
> 7\. Flaw  
> 8\. Huge Intelligence  
> 9\. Everyday Magic  
> 10\. Shelter  
> 11\. Worst  
> 12\. Sun and Moon  
> 13\. Making History  
> 14\. Practice  
> 15\. Enemy   
> 16\. Perfect  
> 17\. Keeping A Secret  
> 18\. Reward  
> 19\. Pavor Nocturnus   
> 20\. Questioning  
> 21\. Execution  
> 22\. Regret  
> 23\. Irritation  
> 24\. Forlorn Memory  
> 25\. Everyday Ridiculousness  
> 26\. Dying  
> 27\. Personality  
> 28\. Librarian  
> 29\. Inconvenience  
> 30\. Invalid  
> 31\. Officer  
> 32\. Exam  
> 33\. Special  
> 34\. Phenomena  
> 35\. Bond  
> 36\. Encrypted  
> 37\. Sensual  
> 38\. Truth  
> 39\. Pen and Paper  
> 40\. Epic Fail   
> 41\. A Moment in Time  
> 42\. Knife  
> 43\. Game   
> 44\. Address  
> 45\. Success  
> 46\. 67%  
> 47\. Power  
> 48\. Pattern  
> 49\. Slaughterhouse  
> 50\. Father  
> 51\. Mother  
> 52\. Son  
> 53\. Daughter  
> 54\. Change in the Weather  
> 55\. Hangover  
> 56\. Coat  
> 57\. Whole  
> 58\. Safety First  
> 59\. Invasion  
> 60\. Alternate Universe   
> 61\. Recollection  
> 62\. Textbook  
> 63\. Nonsense  
> 64\. Lies  
> 65\. Surname  
> 66\. No Way Out  
> 67\. Mispronunciations  
> 68\. Running Away  
> 69\. Negotiation  
> 70\. Shades of Gray  
> 71\. Unsettling Revelations  
> 72\. Hypocrite  
> 73\. Fork in the Road  
> 74\. Snow  
> 75\. Only Human  
> 76\. Difficulty  
> 77\. Ally  
> 78\. Plan  
> 79\. Praise   
> 80\. Can You Hear Me?  
> 81\. Politician  
> 82\. Honoring  
> 83\. Wind  
> 84\. River  
> 85\. Mischief Managed  
> 86\. Sensual  
> 87\. Heritage  
> 88\. Slogan  
> 89\. Danger Ahead  
> 90\. Seeking Solace  
> 91\. Insanity  
> 92\. Smile  
> 93\. Never Again   
> 94\. Burning  
> 95\. Patience  
> 96\. Dead Wrong  
> 97\. Lovely  
> 98\. Weakness  
> 99\. Advantage  
> 100\. Finished


	2. Patience

Dr. Lucius Tertullian waits for his patient to wake up. He watches as the nurses change the young man's bandages, give him hydration and painkillers and blood volume expanders through the tube in his arm, check his wounds for infection. If circumstances weren't quite so dire, Dr. Tertullian would already be drafting his journal article on the young man's case. A medical miracle. That tube, a whole new procedure. He'd be published for sure. But circumstances are dire, Dr. Tertullian isn't the only man waiting, and he's not sure how much longer he can tell the man from Romula that his lordship must be allowed to rest.

The doctor and the man from Romula are present when the patient stirs. The doctor takes a small mirror and reflects light into the patient's good eye, and his pupil contracts. He taps the patient's elbows and knees, feeling for reflexive twitches. Next he asks the patient to move his hands, flex his feet, both sides if you please. The patient complies on his right side, but his left hand and left foot barely flutter. Interesting. It must have come from the brain injury, but the trauma was to the right side of his head. Modern medicine could learn so much from this case, if only the man from Romula wouldn't rush things along.

Now for the part that the man from Romula is there for. Dr. Tertullian raises three fingers and asks the patient to please count them. There is a gleam of intelligence in the young man's eye before he passes out.

\--------------------------

"We cannot wait, Doctor," says the man from Romula.

"And I cannot go any faster, Colonel. Have you any idea what kind of injuries we're dealing with here? I'm inventing protocol as I go, count your blessings that his lordship is even breathing," Dr. Tertullian snaps. The man from Romula has only seen the patient stable. The doctor has been elbow deep in his blood and touched his brain on that chaotic night the sky-ships came in. He can still see it. Late and the wards mostly empty, the lookouts sounding the alarm; ships coming from the north, wounded aboard. They rushed to the airfield in time to see the first come down, an ungraceful landing; the captain venting hydrogen-helium until he hovered barely a foot above the dirt, soldiers and medics leaping from the hatches to help unload. His patient was the first off, of course.

He had written the young man off as a lost cause. Stab wound to the abdomen, massive injury to the head. Right eye gone, right side of his jaw ruined, skull broken open, brain showing under all the blood when the doctor unwound the bandages. Surely a hopeless case, move on. But no. Between the ships and the hospital, they had enough personnel to handle the wounded. He would try, even though some would say this patient didn't deserve to be saved. It wasn't a doctor's place to decide who lived and died, Dr. Tertullian had thought, only help as best he could and let nature take its course.

The surgery had taken fully half a day. They had administered painkillers; it could not have been enough for what they were doing, but the patient would hardly notice any more pain - if he had brain function left at all. At every turn Dr. Tertullian thought he would fail, there was no other possible outcome, but the man pulled through. Simply remarkable.

And now this man from Romula wanted to rush the next most critical part. Who knew who the patient would be when he woke up?Dr. Tertullian had read other accounts of massive brain trauma - the Pawan miner with a steel rod in the front of his skull, the girl in Kara Kitai who took an arrow straight through her head. Both survived against all odds, but both were deeply different afterward. And what skills? Clearly the patient had lost muscle control on his left side. Could he think critically? Could he even speak?

What would someone like the patient, whose entire life had been built on physical and mental skill, do when he woke up and all of it was gone?

"I understand the severity of his lordship's injuries -"

"Then you should also know that the recovery will take months. Years, for the brain."

"-but the fact remains that the Empire is under attack now, and we need his tactical expertise more than ever."

"You realize that little or none of that tactical expertise may remain? At the moment my fingers are crossed for gross motor, maybe speech. Fighting a war, even if he's doing it from a desk, may be asking a bit much."

The man from Romula appears to hesitate, as if wondering how to phrase his next argument. "Doctor. I realize that you may think this course of action medically foolish -", he raises his hand to forestall any comments, " - but the situation in the south is much worse than the newspapers have reported. My superiors are of the opinion that any assistance his lordship could provide would be beneficial."

They are desperate, Tertullian realizes with sinking fear. He glances through the window to where his patient lies, unconscious yet again, constantly monitored by a rotation of nurses. Heavy painkillers and sedatives keep him almost comatose, and a modified neck brace immobilizes his head and jaw. Bandages cover half his face and all of his scalp and wrap around his abdomen. The great and terrifying Commander Sulla Bellorum, hovering between life and death in an intensive care ward.

The doctor is a kind man, and cannot help but pity his patient. No retirement for him, if by chance he survives, no pension, no slow recovery in the countryside. Of course not. An intelligence such as his is far too valuable. A resource, a sort of adding machine, albeit one that had to be paid. _Poor man, they want a weapon, and you're not yet done. ___

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Immediately post-BOF, Sulla lives AU.


	3. Shelter

The edge of the world is quiet. Green and vast and foggy and so quiet. 

Some days she and her father do not speak at all. The only sounds are the calls of sea birds, the low hiss of wind in the pines, and the rattle of the beach stones as waves pull them to sea and throw them ashore. When she looks out to sea, she can feel the vast silence of the forest at her back, miles upon miles of trees. Medea welcomes it. She’s had enough of other people, and they would surely have had enough of her. 

There are people over the mountains, Medea knows, but she does not visit them. They need nothing from her, nor she from them. She armors her mind against their witches, but wonders if they even see her as a threat. There is no reason for her to be. Of the forbidden magic she taught herself, only possession is any use here, and that to bring fish onto land. 

She works hard, like she’s never worked before, to make the beach a permanent home. She guesses – correctly – that the people over the mountains would know if the pair left their landing site, and fears they would not be welcomed. But they have all they need in the little bay where they first touched down. They live in the sky-ship, for now. Dug into the ground and propped against a boulder so the floors are close to level, it makes a passable house – neither of them can build. Oskan has knowledge of edible plants from a childhood in the Great Forest, and Medea a passing knowledge from her witch’s education. She lures animals to their deaths with magic, but makes a great show of teaching herself snares so that her father will not suspect. 

He must never suspect. Anything. 

When the clouds come down and the fog rolls in, it’s easy to pretend there’s nothing across the sea. That they’ve always lived there – no Icemark, no war, no other family. That she and Oskan, safe on the beach, are the only two people left in the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Medea's plan succeeds, and she escapes with Oskan to the far west. Very much a dark timeline.


	4. Plan

The instructors expect to register lies during the first sessions. It would be strange, suspicious even, if an untrained cadet showed no reaction at all. Ordinary people are nervous when they lie, apparently, and even react physically. Octavius and Sulla are both thankful they aren’t ordinary. It sounds so inconvenient. 

Sulla practices faking the tells, all the eye movements and subtle tenses and nervous shifts that he was never troubled with, for weeks before the sessions begin. If it’s possible to conceal a lie, then it should be possible to reveal one as well, and then slowly go back to normal in later sessions as he ‘learns.’ He expects it to be a fun game, although not particularly useful. 

Octavius doesn’t think about his strategy until a couple of days before. He sticks a pushpin in his boot and shoves his toe against it each time he lies, and the monitor can’t tell the difference.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Baby villains cheating at a polygraph, because I guess that's just the content we're putting out today.


End file.
